Monday, November 3, 2008

infoaxe and web memory

I read an article today in 'The Hindu' about a search engine : infoaxe.com - They are boasting about having got some of the top investors invested in them. The most highlighted feature of the search engine is something called 'web memory' thru which they track the sites the user is browsing and aiming provide the 'relevant' info to the users.

I wanted to visit the website out of enthusiasm. Not able to understand why they should use a tool bar to have the user's searches in their server (and why do it only thru a toolbar?). I found the following statement from their FAQ.

Your (web) memory is private to you and protected by your infoaxe account and password. This ensures that your web memory is private to you even when you share a computer with another user.

Is the login not enough to provide privacy?

I think google already does this thru its login. If you login into google before you search, all your search is maintained in the search history. (Look for the link 'Web History' on the right top when you search using google after logging in).

How many websites will I allow to create a toolbar in my browser? Am I not using a browser to browse many websites? If i have install a toolbar for every website that provides it, will they not fill my entire browser?

In my firefox, i would not want to have any toolbar exept my bookmarks toolbar. A web user would love a good browsing experience than infoaxe!

2 comments:

Take Jerax said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Take Jerax said...

You are correct that it is irritating to have tool bars. It is pretty trivial for them to make these disappear and come back up on demand. Remember they just launched version 1 and it'll take a couple of versions and user feedback to add such features.

Secondly, i think the author of the article in the Hindu is a complete moron. He calls it "india's answer to google". It looks like this was written by someone who lacks a fundamental understanding of the consumer internet space.

It is a pretty useful indexing/retrieval service for your web memory. Calling it a search engine and comparing it to google is just technically flawed.
Lastly, it looks like the author wants to harp on the fact that the founders are indian rather than spend time talking about its features/innovation.

Overall, I'm just disappointed with the this journalist.